Revelation, page 8
part #3 of Relic Wars Series
“They'll never negotiate with us,” Iris said quietly. “They'll never make peace. We're just meat to them.”
“We have a choice to make,” Hagen said. “It looks like Monavia's been overrun. We'd hoped to deliver the bioweapon in time to help, but we were too late. I doubt the League has a functioning bioweapons lab or chemical plant left down there.”
“If they even have people left,” Carol said quietly. “How many lived on Monavia?”
“Millions,” Alanna said. “Tens of millions. It was one of the most populated worlds.”
They all sat quietly for a minute, contemplating that.
“So we can continue on,” Hagen said. “We can jump the gate like we planned, and we'll find plenty of annelids to kill all around Monavia's system. They might even have the gate surrounded, ready to kill any humans who pop out. So we'll go down, but we'll go down fighting for humanity, taking as many of the worms with us as we can.”
“Sounds good to me,” Bartley said.
“Our other option is to chart a new course,” Hagen said.
“To where?” Eric asked.
“That's up for debate. Maybe Earth. If we can deliver the bioweapon, they might have the ability to mass-produce it. We might be able to fight alongside them—”
“Earth?” Iris snapped. “Of course. You fought for them.”
“He has a point,” Carol said. “With the Colonials beaten down, the Alliance is the only place we can join up with a military that hasn't already been exhausted—I know some people we could call—”
“I bet you do,” Iris said. Her hatred for Earth and the Alliance was intense; her family on the mountainous moon of Luminaria had been killed by Allied bombing. “This is probably what you wanted all along. I bet you're enjoying seeing the League defeated.”
“Do you think I'm a monster?” Carol snapped. “Millions of people just died, most of them civilians. I'm just trying to be practical.”
“I'll go down fighting for the League, but not for Earth,” Bartley said.
“We're all humans,” Carol said.
“If we don't want to fight, we can try to go home,” Hagen said. “But we're all from different worlds, so that'll be a long journey, too.”
“And we all have a claim on this ship,” Carol said. “We've been through hell and this is all we have to show for it.”
“We could sell it and split the profits,” Hagen said. “After Alanna is repaid for all she sank into repairing the ship.”
“I can't go home,” Alanna said. “They've destroyed my home.”
“My home was destroyed years ago by the Allies,” Iris said, with a sharp look at Carol. “But I think we should go to Kreltaris. We can deliver the alien relics to the Antikytheran Society. They can determine how best to use them against the annelids.”
“We could just as well deliver them to the Ptolemaic Society on Earth,” Hagen said. “They're the older gatekeeper order.”
“Earth is a much longer journey from here than Kreltaris,” Iris said. “And I'd rather die than empower the Ptolemaics.”
Eric wanted to argue that they should put aside the old divisions of humanity, but he agreed that he didn't want to go all the way to Earth if he could be rid of the relics at Kreltaris first. He'd had disturbing nightmares almost every night since he'd started using the mask, and those were worse now that he'd just used it again recently to impersonate Dr. Gregorski. And the gauntlet had fed on him greedily, powering itself with his flesh; he was still thin from the time he'd used it, and his arm was pockmarked with scars from the bloody sores it had left behind. Better to let the experts figure out how to use that tech. It was likely to kill Eric if he made a mistake with it.
“Eric, you look deep in thought,” Hagen said. “Do you want to suggest a destination?”
“I just want to fight in the war and see the worms defeated,” Eric said. “I agree with Iris about the relics, though. We should take them to the Antikytherans.”
Carol made a snorting sound.
“Alanna?” Hagen asked.
“What do you think?” Alanna asked Abel, watching him closely. He'd been abnormally quiet as they discussed options. Eric wondered if he'd really slept with Alanna.
“Have we seen any sign that Earth and the Allies are preparing for war against the worms?” Abel asked.
“We're a long way from Earth,” Hagen said. “And a lot of the signal relays seem to be cut off, like the worms are attacking the router system. It could be days before they get the word about Monavia. They may not even know about Huayuan yet.”
Alanna's face tightened slightly at the mention of her destroyed homeworld, but she kept silent.
“It's only a matter of time before Earth joins in the fighting,” Carol said.
“They're sure taking their sweet time about it.” Abel looked around the room, then took a deep breath. “We could go to...Zeta Base. That must be where the fleet will fall back to. If there's enough of a fleet left to fall back.” He grimaced, then seemed to shake the thought off with a toss of his head. “And those stationed in other systems. They'll need a rallying point.”
“Where the hell is Zeta Base?” Bartley asked. “I've never heard of it.”
“It's a classified fallback point,” Abel said. “With...well, quite a lot of weapons. And fighters. And a few destroyers. The spacecraft are mostly obsolete—relics of the early years of the war. But they'll fly. Zeta Base kind of became a storage depot for equipment too old to use on the front lines but too valuable to scrap. And after the Armistice...well, a lot more got stored there.”
“It's an illegal weapons cache,” Carol said, catching on faster than Eric had.
“Well, if you can call the terms of the Armistice laws—” Abel said, looking away.
“You can,” Carol said. “It's the only law governing all human worlds, Colonial and Allied.”
“There are outliers,” Abel said. “Independent colonies who refused to take sides in the war—as if being independent didn't automatically align them with the Colonial League...” He shook his head.
“That illegal weapons cache sounds like the best news I've heard today,” Hagen said. “Colonial or not. But if the Colonial fleet couldn't defend the Colonial capital, where will a stockpile of obsolete weapons get us?”
“We'll hook up with what's left of the fleet there,” Abel said. “And maybe by the time we get there, we'll know whether Earth has any plans to aid us, or whether we're on our own, making our last stand. And if we are...I want to be there when it happens, helping however we can. That's what we're here to do. To defend the people of the League. My pilots and I intend to do that until our last breath.”
The room was quiet for a long moment.
“I agree with Abel,” Alanna finally said, not looking at him, as if ashamed of the bubbling feelings he seemed to inspire in her. Or maybe she was resisting them, if she was smart—Abel might have seemed charming to the ladies, but he wasn't one for particularly long-term or exclusive commitments. “Let's join up with the Colonial fleet at this secret base.”
Iris nodded. “I'd like to get the relics delivered, but this might be another chance for us to use them against the aliens. I vote we go to Zeta Base if it's not a far journey. You haven't been very specific about where it's located.” Iris looked at Abel.
“Well, I'm ready to link up with the Colonials and fight,” Bartley said. “Sounds good to me.”
“Any objections to Zeta Base?” Hagen looked at Eric, who shook his head, and Carol.
“Earth is a long way off,” Carol said. “The war could be over by the time this old metal beast gets us there. We have a better chance of providing meaningful help at Zeta Base. I'm perfectly willing to fight alongside Allies or Colonials when it's for the greater good of humanity.” She cast a sharp look at Iris as she said this. Iris turned her face away slightly, letting her hood hide her expression from Carol.
“Sounds like we're settled on Zeta Base,” Hagen said.
“If only we had any idea where it was,” Eric said, looking at Abel.
Abel glanced at Carol and Hagen, clearly reluctant to reveal classified information to two people who'd fought for Earth. It was going to be fairly impossible to keep their destination secret from the ship's commanding officer and pilot, though.
“Gossamer,” Abel finally said, releasing a little bit of a sigh with it. “Zeta Base is on Gossamer.”
“What?” Eric said. That was the name of Gideon's small, pale moon. “Not our Gossamer? But it's in the middle of nowhere. There's hardly any industry, only a couple of small Colonial bases...”
“Exactly. As an agricultural planet on the fringes of settled space, Gideon was a place where nobody would expect anything important to happen. It sure seemed that way growing up.” Abel grinned. “But Gideon is more than we thought. Gossamer is a small moon, which means very little gravity...but it is a moon, one honeycombed with caves, with plenty of room under its surface to hide things. Even starships.” Abel seemed to drink in the shocked expression on Eric's face, savoring it like a fine wine. “That's right, little brother. Looks like it's time for us to finally go home.”
Chapter Nine
After checking that the refugees were safely on the way to Fairgrace, the Rex crew jumped through Juno Gate, but not to Monavia's system; they instead passed through a small system whose habitable planet was a cold, muddy place, thoroughly misnamed Brightjoy. Many planets were named in a fashion meant to encourage settlement, marketing purposes that reflected little about the planet's actual ecology or culture. Gideon had been named for its founders' religious devotion, to attract like-minded settlers, though Eric supposed that was a sort of marketing in itself.
The shortest course to Gideon system involved jumping four gates, which meant crossing through a sizable portion of three other star systems. Iris had charted their course carefully based on the planetary alignments in each system, to find places where the gates were as close as possible. There was another route that only involved three wormholes, she'd explained, but at this time of the year, they'd spend weeks crossing those two systems.
As it was, it would take eight standard day-cycles to reach Gideon's system.
Along the way, news stories filtered in, picked up and rebroadcast by routers at the gates. The galaxy was reacting in horror to the news of attacks on Huayuan, Monavia, and smaller worlds.
“It's only Colonial worlds getting attacked,” Alanna said, about halfway through their journey, when most of them were in the Rex's officers' club, eating some kind of beef and pea dish whipped up by the chefbot. Alanna had restocked their depleted stores a bit at the Cargo Exchange, but the news of war had skyrocketed the price of everything on the space station. War meant uncertainty; it meant there might be no other resources or supplies on the way, not from interstellar trade.
“The worms probably cut a deal with the filthy Earthlings,” Bartley said.
“Excuse me?” Carol said.
“Hey, it's not your fault,” Bartley said. “I know you can't help being a filthy Earthling.”
“Earth is not working with the worms,” Carol said, sounding offended.
“And you know all about the secret policies of the Alliance Supreme Authority because...?” Bartley cupped an ear at her, pretending to listen close even though she wasn't talking. “...what's that? You have access to the Alliance President's private communications? You've planted bugs all over the Executive Tower? Is that it? I can't seem to hear you.”
Carol looked furious now. “I know we aren't monsters. We're just people.”
“Just people whose obsession with controlling the entire human race led them to kill millions of colonists,” Abel said. “Ruling all the known worlds? That's supposed to be some sort of high moral calling?”
“Keeping humanity united,” Carol said. “It was the colonists who started the war. Terrorists, attacking Earth's military and government buildings. Millions died on our side, too. My home city, Saint Louis, was left a smoking wreck.”
“They showed us videos of separatists on Malb,” Hagen said. “Lining up anyone tied to Earth—government officials, business executives, teachers—lining them up along a ditch. Blindfolding them. A Colonial walked along the line with a nail gun, because I guess nails are cheaper than bullets, and he blasted them in the back of the head, one by one. Dropping them in the ditch. Grinning the whole way. Some of them were still wriggling when they bulldozed the dirt over the mass grave.”
“The Malbist Independence Front are hardly representative of all Colonials,” Alanna said.
“They never fought with us,” Abel said. “They weren't part of the Colonial League military.”
“But they did receive money from League intelligence!” Carol snapped.
“Conspiracy theories.” Abel rolled his eyes.
“There were atrocities on both sides,” Hagen said. “War brings out the best and worst in us; the courage, the loyalty, all right, but for some, it's an opportunity to commit atrocities, to play out their darkest and most violent desires.”
“Some more than others,” Abel said. “Earthlings especially.”
The conversation wasn't atypical—life on the Rex was tense. They'd suffered losses and seen a lot of death. Abel insisted on a memorial service for his lost pilots, and grudgingly agreed to mention the pirate and smuggler crews who'd died as well. It was a long list of names.
At the service, Abel read “Reflections on Eternity,” a common funeral prayer on Gideon, written by Ascensionism's founder, McGillicutty. Eric wasn't sure whether any of the dead shared their beliefs—their religion was fairly small—but he didn't say anything about that.
They held the service on the observation deck, where an immense reinforced window looked out onto space beyond, onto millions of stars.
“'When I cast out my gaze on the sky, I see eternity,'” Abel read. “'I see the beginnings of life and men. I see our birthright, our destiny, waiting to be reclaimed.'”
Eric looked out at the stars and galaxies, holding trillions of planets. He saw nothing but vast uncertainty.
Later, he lay awake in shadows while Iris slept beside him. He'd been weak again; his desire was intense, and he found himself thinking of her all the time, his conscience telling him to break it off, his blood and flesh craving more.
The problem grew more intense by the moment. With every breath, they drew closer to Gideon. To Suzette.
He should have been elated at the prospect of heading home, even briefly; seeing his parents, smelling the sweet black earth of the prairie. He'd been gone far too long, the better part of a year, and he'd never left home before that.
He'd allowed himself to get involved with Iris under the assumption that he wouldn't be home for a long time, that they would go off to war against the annelids, and if they survived, go back to their own lives.
The sudden change in course to Gideon's system also meant a radical shift in his girlfriend situation. The girl he was sleeping with would be dangerously close in proximity to the girl he was supposed to marry. He didn't see how happy consequences could follow.
He didn't know what to tell Suzette. He didn't know what he wanted himself. He couldn't imagine spending his life with Iris. She was devoted to her order, anyway, and he'd heard that gatekeepers weren't even allowed to marry. But he hadn't asked her about that, not really wanting to raise the subject, and she hadn't mentioned it.
On the other hand, his future with Suzette was clear to him, and always had been: their acreage back home, their farms united right along the back trail they'd sometimes used to sneak out and meet each other. He knew the exact fence post that marked the transition from his land to hers; it had almost been swallowed by a stand of purple-tipped elephant grass taller than his head.
They would tend their land and herds, raise their children—a number of them, to help work all that land. They'd watch the long, slow, colorful sunrise over the prairie on summer mornings, batten down the shutters against cold winter winds, hide in the cellar during tornado season. He would read the same illustrated Wizard of Oz that his mother had read to him and his brothers as children, for some reason thinking it would comfort them against the fierce, wild winds that blasted the infinite green grasslands from time to time. And for some reason, the old story did provide comfort, or at least distraction from fear.
That was the true life, Eric knew, his real future.
And now he was on a collision course with it, only days from arriving at Gideon.
Eric stood, leaving Iris's bed. He dressed and headed for the hallway, on its dim night-cycle lighting.
He didn't feel like sleeping, or worse, fending off Bartley's lewd and often disturbingly specific questions about Eric's nightly visits with Iris. Things like: “Do her head implants ever get caught in your zipper when she's deep-slurping the little man?”
That wasn't a conversation he wanted to get into.
Eric headed for the most quiet and remote area of the ship, the factory floor where asteroid ore was broken down, chemically leeched, purified, the valuable metals finally melted, cooled, and stored as ingots, while the useless rock slag and toxic chemical waste got dumped back out into space.
He looked down from the catwalk. The machinery had been full of cobwebs when Eric had first seen it, but now the factory floor smelled like petroleum machine lubricant and the stink of those leeching chemicals. They'd caught an asteroid and butchered it here, on the way to Madbox Colony, to pay for repairs with raw nickel, iron, and silver.
Mining had been straightforward, honest work, he thought, pulling metals out of the deep rock to provide them for humanity's use. People would take those metals and build spacecrafts, homes, cities. Life had been hard but peaceful and productive. Now everything was death and blood.
“So this is where the magic happens,” a voice said behind him, and Eric recognized it from the first word. “I never knew they made mining ships this big.”
